A Wicked Snow

paused, once more evaluating what he’d say. He started wheezing and coughing, a fit that lasted almost a minute. But Wheaton waved his big, meaty hands, indicating he’d continue. “Your dad was in the way. Your dad was a roadblock to your mom’s desires. I think we all were. I mean I think she loved us for what she could get from us… and when we were used up, she didn’t give a flying fuck.”

There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Even so, Marcus Wheaton cleared the phlegm from his throat and spoke one more time.

“You know, Hannah. When I tell you you’re nothing like your mother, I mean it.”

Hannah muttered thanks, but nothing more.

She and Bauer walked almost in complete silence after saying good-bye to Madsen and leaving their best wishes for the warden. So frazzled by what she’d heard, Hannah almost forgot she’d left her purse—and car keys— in the visiting checkpoint. They walked to their cars. Dust swirled from exiting parents and wives, smudged windows catching the sun, low in the sky.

“Hannah,” Bauer said, “I almost said, ‘a penny for your thoughts’ but you know that sounds so stupid… I want to know what you’re thinking.”

“I hate her,” was all she could come up with. “I’m going home.”

Bauer looked puzzled. “What did you expect?”

“I guess I hoped that he’d say she was dead. That, in fact, she was Twenty.” Hannah inserted her key into the lock and opened her car door.

“Maybe he’s lying. He’s got plenty of reasons to put the blame on her.”

She stared at Bauer and shook her head. “He loved her. He’s bitter. I guess he’s a lot like me.”

“That’s funny,” Bauer said, and, looking at her, amended his words with, “as in strange funny.”

Hannah let out an irritated sigh. “What’s that?”

“Wheaton says you’re nothing like your mother… and you think you’re more like him, huh?”

Hannah shrugged. “I guess so. I’d rather not be like either one of them, if it’s all the same to you.”

Ethan Griffin was not, as he liked to say, “a happy camper.” Still in his police uniform, Hannah’s husband’s blocky physique occupied the space like an over-heated Kenmore as he stood in the kitchen in their home on Loma Linda Avenue. A mad Kenmore. He turned his head from Amber, who was busy moving her broccoli and a somewhat gray noodle casserole around her plate, and stepped away from the table. He held the phone firmly enough to break it in two. Hannah was on the line and she was about to get an earful, and as far as he could see, she deserved it. Freak-show mother or not.

“You left without saying much more than a word, and now you’re not coming home,” he said, doing his best to keep somewhat calm while his wife went off with some hot-shit FBI ghostbuster. “This is just perfect,” he snapped, the sarcasm giving him some relief from his anger. “You don’t know what you’re messing with. And that idiot Ted Ripperton keeps calling looking for you. I’ve told him that you went to see a friend in the Bay Area.”

“Thanks. I’ve already talked to him. He’s been paging me all day.”

“Amber and I want you home.” Ethan softened when he saw that Amber was listening. “I’m worried about you.” Ethan threw their daughter’s name into his plea, knowing that a child’s heart carries more weight than a husband’s. In reality, he was more lonely and tired than angry.

“It’s just for one more night,” Hannah said, ignoring Ethan’s brewing anger because there was no time to talk it out. “I’m not happy about it either,” she said. “I’m going to stay in Cutter’s Landing tonight, and I’ll be home sometime late tomorrow. If I could leave right now, I’d do it. Believe me, I want out of here.”

Ethan sighed, letting out an over-the-top noise that sounded like a leaking truck tire. The sound meant he loved her, but hated the situation. “I’ll put your daughter on,” Ethan’s voice regained its characteristic understanding tone. He knew his anger had more to do with worry about her than any personal inconvenience.

Amber took the receiver and cooed into the phone. “Hi, Mommy!”

“Hello, darling. I miss you.” Hannah realized that her words sounded flat, and she told herself keep the mood lighter.

“Miss you, too. Got a hundred on my spelling test,” the little girl said, oblivious to her mother’s somber tone. “I got extra credit, too.”

“That’s wonderful. I knew you could do it.”

“I know. Daddy cooked tonight. I mean you cooked and Daddy reheated in the micro.”

Hannah brightened for the first time during the conversation. “Good, I hope.”

“I might have seconds,” Amber lied. A lie she knew she could get away with because her mother wasn’t much of a cook and her father loved both of them so much that he would never spill the beans.

“Honey, I’ll be home tomorrow. Give Daddy a big sloppy kiss for me.”

Amber laughed. “Okay. Bye.”

Ethan got his kiss and picked up the phone.

“This is very bad,” Hannah said. Her voice broke a little. “This is very hard.”

Seeing the exchange between mother and daughter, the sweetness of the little girl’s lie, calmed him somewhat. “Are you all right? Sorry about being a jerk just now.”

“I am, in fact, frightened as hell. I wish to God you were here. There is so much that needs sorting out.”

Ethan was tense, but he didn’t want to scare her anymore. She was hanging by a thread, and he knew it. “Can I help now, babe?” he asked. He pulled up a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. Amber continued to pick at her food. He’d heard worry in his wife’s voice before, but not connected with anything associated with herself. Not directly. Nothing personal. When anxiety crept into Hannah’s voice, it almost certainly was over a heavy caseload or the result of a desperate search for phantom evidence at the rebuttal phase or some other key point in a trial to prove a witness is lying.

“I don’t know,” she said, wanting to present what she had learned in that visiting room in a way that wouldn’t worry Ethan. Instead, she just blurted it out.

“Wheaton says my mother is alive. And Marcella Hoffman is nosing around the lab asking questions and making a nuisance of herself. That’s why Ripp was calling so much. She wants an interview. She’s got some pretext about women investigators, and thank God, Ripp is too dense to figure anything out.”

Ethan went blank. The name didn’t quite track. “Who’s Marcella Hoffman?”

Silence fell for a second. “Twenty in a Row.”

“Oh, that Marcella Hoffman.” When recognition came, the name jolted like a radio in a bathtub. Ethan had read the book before he met Hannah. He saw the TV movie. “You’re right,” he said, his adrenaline pumping. “This isn’t good.”

“Wheaton says my mother is alive. Thinks she’s up in Alaska somewhere. And you don’t react to that?”

There was a short silence on the line.

“No. Hannah,” Ethan finally said, “I didn’t react because I’ve always thought she was out there somewhere. I’ve always believed your mother got away with murder.”

And for that I could kill her with my bare hands, he thought, although he wisely didn’t say the words.

“I don’t know what to think,” Hannah said, her voice growing very quiet. “I need some time.”

Across the Cascades in Spruce County where it all began, Veronica Paine felt her stomach flutter and her blood pressure rise. She paced over sumptuous Oriental rugs that she and her husband had collected over the years. She looked out the window at her garden. She turned on the TV. But nothing could distract her from her own thoughts. It had been long enough. She realized it when she replayed the obvious anguish in Hannah Griffin’s voice. Certainly, Hannah presented a brave face, but for what? What had seemed like a good idea, the right idea… the sanctity of the law, long ago, no longer felt as right to the former prosecutor and judge. She snuffed out a cigarette, let out the cat, and set the intruder alarm that her husband insisted they get the month before he died. Opening the front door was like a blast from a heater. No jacket was needed. She got into her red Chevy Blazer and started driving, heading in the direction of the Spruce County Courthouse.

She didn’t know it, but a driver in a late-model car slipped behind her Blazer, staying just out of view.